"She made me so mad praising you. I wanted to show her you weren't the only saint in the world."
"Did you really want to hear that missionary?" asked Marigold.
"I sure did. Wanted to hear if he'd tell any cannibal yarns so's we could make a game of them when I went back to Rush Hill," said Gwennie promptly.
Which was wickeder still. But oh, how Marigold loved Gwennie.
"We've wasted a week," she said mournfully.
"Never mind. We'll make up for it this week," said Gwendolen Vincent ominously.
Grandmother can't understand it to this day. She never forgot that second week.
"One of your deep ones, that," Salome always said afterwards, whenever any one mentioned the name of Gwendolen Vincent.
"You can't always tell a saint by the cut of his jib," remarked Lucifer, who had never felt that his tail was safe in spite of Gwendolen's saintliness.
CHAPTER XII
Marigold Entertains
1
"No more fat for me. I've nearly died eating fat this week," was Gwendolen's declaration of independence that night at supper. Grandmother, who hadn't noticed the gate yet - Phidime had wired it up rather cleverly - wondered what had happened to her.
"You should eat the fat WITH the lean," she said severely.
Gwennie stuck out her tongue at Grandmother. It gave Marigold a shock to realise that anybody could do that and live. Grandmother actually said nothing. What was there to say? But she reflected that Annie Vincent's child possibly ran truer to form than they had supposed after all. Grandmother would never have admitted it, but she was almost as tired of Gwennie's perfection as Marigold was. So she pretended not to see the grimace.
Grandmother had to pretend blindness a good many times in the days that followed, rather than outrage hospitality and incur Annie Vincent's eternal wrath by spanking her offspring or sending her home with a flea in her ear. The famed serenity of Cloud of Spruce was smashed to smithereens. A day without a thrill was a lost day for Gwennie.
Marigold enjoyed it - with reservations. Gwennie cared nothing for story-books or kittens and knew nothing whatever about the dryads that lived in the beech clump or the wind spirits that came up the harbour on stormy nights. Marigold would never have dreamed of telling her about Sylvia or taking her along the secret paths of her enchanted groves. But still Gwennie was a good little scout. There was always something doing when she was about, and she WAS funny. She was always "taking off" some one. She could imitate anyone to perfection. It was very amusing - though you always had a little uneasy feeling that the minute your back was turned she might be imitating YOU. Grandmother really was very cross the day Gwennie spilled soup over Mrs. Dr. Emsley's silk dress at the dinner-table because she was "taking off" the old doctor's way of eating soup and sending poor Marigold into convulsions of unholy mirth.
Of course fun was all right. But Gwennie laughed at so many things Marigold had been taught to hold sacred, and giggled when she should be reverent. It was awful to go to church with her. She said such funny things about everybody and it was so wicked to laugh in church, even silently. Yet laugh Marigold sometimes had to till the pew shook and Grandmother glared at her.
But Marigold would not allow Gwennie to baptise the kittens. Gwen thought it would be "such fun" and had the bowl of water and everything ready. She was to be the minister and Marigold was to hold the kittens.
But Marigold had put her foot down firmly. No kittens were going to be baptised and that was that.
"Grandmother wouldn't allow it," said Marigold.
"I don't care a hang for Grandmother," said Gwennie.
"I do."
"You're just afraid of her," said Gwennie contemptuously. "Do have some spunk."
"I've lots of spunk," retorted Marigold. "And it isn't because I'm afraid of her that I won't have the kittens baptised. It just isn't right."
"Do you know," said Gwennie, "what I do at home when Father or Mother won't let me do things. I just sit down and yell at the top of my voice till they give in."
"You couldn't yell Grandmother out," said Marigold proudly.
Gwennie sulked all the evening and Marigold felt badly because she really liked Gwennie very much. But there were some things that simply were not done and baptising kittens was one of them. Gwennie announced in the morning that she would forgive Marigold.
"I don't want to be forgiven. I haven't done anything wrong," retorted Marigold. "I WON'T be forgiven."
"I WILL forgive you. You can't prevent me," said Gwennie virtuously. "And now let's arrange for something different to happen to-day. I'm tired of everything we've been doing. Look here, was there ever a day in your life you did EVERYTHING you wanted to?"
Marigold reflected. "No."
"Well, let's do everything we want to to-day. Every single thing."
"Everything YOU want or everything I want?" queried Marigold significantly.
"Everything I want," declared Gwennie. "I'm the visitor, so you OUGHT to let me do as I want. Now, come on, don't be a 'fraid-cat. I won't ask you to baptise kittens. We'll leave the holy things out since you're so squeamish. I'll tell you what I AM going to do. I'm dying to taste some of that blueberry wine. I asked your grandmother yesterday for some but she said it wasn't good for little girls. That's all in my eye. I'm just going to get a bottle out right now and open it. We'll take a glass apiece and put the bottle back. Nobody'll ever know."
Marigold knew quite well this wasn't right. But it was a different kind of wrongness from the kitten-project. And she knew that Gwennie would do it whether it was right or not; and Marigold had a secret hankering to see what blueberry wine was like. They would never give her any of it, which she thought very mean. Grandmother's blueberry wine was famous, and when evening callers came they were always treated to blueberry wine with their cake.
Grandmother and Mother and Salome were all far up in the orchard picking the August apples. It was a good chance and, as Gwennie said, likely nobody would miss the two glassfuls if they put the bottle away back on the pantry shelf in the dark corner.
The dining-room was cool and shadowy. It had been newly papered in the spring, and Mother had just put up the new cream net curtains that waved softly in the August breezes. Grandmother's beautiful bluebird centrepiece, which Aunt Dorothy had sent her all the way from Vancouver, was on the table under the bowl of purple delphiniums. Hanging over a chair was Salome's freshly laundered blue and white print dress.
Marigold lingered to whisper something to the delphiniums, while Gwennie popped into the pantry and came out with a bottle.
"The cork is wired down," she said. "I'll have to run out to the apple-barn and get the pliers. You wait here and if you hear any one coming pop the bottle back into the pantry."
Nobody came and Marigold watched the bottle with its beautiful purplish-red glow. At last she was going to know what blueberry wine was like. It was really rather jolly to have some one round who dared fly in Grandmother's face.
Gwennie saw nobody but Lazarre on her trip to the apple-barn. Lazarre, whose opinion of Gwennie's ancestry was sulphurous, knew something was in the wind.
"Dat kid she always look special lak de angel w'en she plannin' some devil-work," he muttered. But he said nothing. If three women couldn't look after her it was none of his business.
"I've brought a corkscrew, too," said Gwennie, twisting the wire deftly around with the pliers.
As it happened, there was no need of the corkscrew. None whatever.